Researchers found a reduction in crime rate and accidents in those cities where at least 1% of the population practices Transcendental Meditation
(Borland, Landrith, Scientific Research on the TM program, Collected Papers volume 1, MUM Press 1977, MUM, Fairfield, Iowa).
This was found using Box-Jenkins time series impact assessment analysis of predicted threshold.

This incredible effect is controversial, because it is considered impossible by many people, even scientists, but it has been actually observed several times (as shown on many articles that can be found on the website mum.edu).
This sociological phenomenon has been called "Maharishi Effect".

The Maharishi Effect is supposed to be due to wave coherence in the collective consciousness of any community. Scientific research seems to have shown that when 1% of the population of a city practices Transcendental Meditation (TM), the crime rate and the number of accidents significantly decrease.
The basis of the Maharishi Effect is the rise of collective consciousness. Collective consciousness is the wholeness of consciousness of any specific group. For example, when we talk of community consciousness, we merely put together the consciousness of all the individuals who make up the community. For national consciousness we put together the consciousness of all the citizens of a nation.
There are seven principal levels: family consciousness, community consciousness, city consciousness, state or provincial consciousness, national consciousness, world consciousness, and universal consciousness.

The phenomenon of collective consciousness can be understood by examining the concept of a field, as described by modern science. Physicists delineate a variety of unbounded fields that operate throughout the universe. For example, the electromagnetic field, one of the four principal force fields in physics, enables radio and television broadcasting by creating electromagnetic waves. The waves are unseen, but they create effects with which we are all familiar: the sounds and images of radio and television.
Likewise, the other three fundamental force fields — gravitation, weak nuclear interaction, and strong nuclear interaction — also behave invisibly throughout Nature.

Self-referral consciousness is supposed to be a field, though on an even more fundamental level,
which lies, as a potential entity, in the unified field of physics, the unbounded field from which all force and matter fields are supposed to emerge.
Just as a radio transmitter can create waves in the electromagnetic field, individuals constantly create influences on all parts of creation simply because consciousness permeates every aspect of the material universe. To illustrate, if a stone is thrown into a pond, waves are produced that travel throughout the pond. Each wave produces some effect in every part of the pond. Similarly, the wave of individual life, through its activity, produces an influence all around.
On the basis of this principle, the direct experience of self-referral consciousness influences every aspect of the environment, enlivening it with the order and harmony inherent within self-referral consciousness. For this reason, groups of individuals can create powerful effects in the environment through their collective practice of Transcendental Meditation.

In physics, certain principles allow to protect the order or the structural integrity of a system. This may include many aspects, including, the strength of the material, its hardness, the strength of the structure, its resistance to outside penetrations, etc.
One example is the Meissner Effect. If we take an ordinary metal at ordinary temperatures, in which the electrons flow around in a disorderly and confused state, and bring a magnet near the bar, the magnetic field will penetrate inside the iron.
In a superconductor, on the contrary, the electrons within are moving in a coherent collective state, and because of their coherence, the invading magnetic field is repelled, and must flow around the outside of the superconductor. In this case, it is the coherence of the collective functioning of the electrons that causes it to maintain its perfect state.
The researchers of the MUM (Maharishi University of Management) believe that the Maharishi Effect acts in the same way on the collective consciousness.